Sylvie," she said.
"Why don't you try? Tell us what you feel and you'll be right if you let yourself."
"I feel. . ." Heather had to quell an impression that Sylvia was prompting her to admit she felt both watched and hidden from. "I hope mother will finish in the woods soon and then we can all start to forget about them," she said.
"Not likely."
She didn't know who'd spoken in a whisper that barely owned up to itself; she seemed less to have heard it than to remember having heard. It made her feel more watched than ever, so that she couldn't help glancing behind her. There was no concealment in the paved street lit by display windows and white globular lamps—at least, the occasional benches would hide nothing larger than a child, and the saplings not even that. Those bore no relation to the woods outside the town, and there were no more bony shadows than there ought to be, nor did their twitching betray the presence of shapes too gaunt to live that were about to scuttle into view. She faced forward, only to be confronted by half a dozen trees, their shadows clutching at the pavement as though to help them or some aspect of them rear up. "Sometimes," she muttered before she knew she would, "I wish I hadn't been born here."
"Someone had to be."
Perhaps she wasn't hearing the high thin whisper, since neither Sam's face nor her sister's even hinted at having released it. If the imagination Heather was said to lack had determined to prove her accusers wrong, she would have preferred it to find another time and place. She held back from walking faster than Sam could limp and Sylvia plod, but when they turned the corner towards home she stifled a sigh of relief. She did her best to ignore the unquiet hedges and dimmer shrubs on the way to the corner shop.
The door of J's & J's was open, revealing Joe alone behind the counter. As the
Prices came in sight he ceased speaking to three women, who swung round to follow his gaze. Apparently they recognised the Prices, though Heather barely knew them. "Has Jessica left you to it, Joe?" she called.
"She's at home."
His initial pause made Heather consider not enquiring and then ask "Anything wrong?"
"She's looking after the granddaughter."
"Rosemary's all right though, is she?"
The women appeared to feel expected to look hostile on his behalf. "She's been having nightmares about you," he admitted.
"What about me?"
"One of your family. I don't think it was you." He clearly wished they didn't have an audience. "Nightmares or seeing things, one of the two," he said with some defiance.
Heather stepped through the doorway. "Which things?" she was determined to hear.
"I couldn't tell you. You'd have to talk to Jessica. We found the child wandering out the back, it looked like in her sleep. We won't be leaving her in bed at home again if her parents even let her stay."
This sounded more accusing than confessional. "Was she in the woods?" Sylvia asked, having followed Heather into the shop.
"No." He stared at her as if to rebuke her interest—stared almost as hard as the women were staring—but couldn't quite sustain his harshness. "She'd have gone in if we hadn't woken her," he said. "I know you're not supposed to wake anyone that's walking in their sleep, but we didn't know she was till we did."
"So long as you kept her out of there," said a woman with a tin of cat food in her hand. "I wouldn't want a child going anywhere near."
"There's been a few too many seeing things round here just lately," said another, digging her fingers into a sliced white loaf.
"These last few months," the third said, inserting a humbug between lips wrinkled almost colourless.
None of them had looked away from Sylvia, who sighed. "Since I came home, are you saying?"
"Nobody was talking to you," the woman choking the loaf informed her.
"The town hasn't been the same since any of you came here," said her friend, absently scratching the label off the tin of cat food.
"Since someone started messing about in the woods," their companion added in a voice blurred and rendered hollow by the sweet that clicked against her teeth.
Joe was ready to protest, but Heather overtook him. "If you mean our father," she said with a calm she was far from experiencing, "he came here to help you. You already had the problem and he tried to sort it out."
"Ended up as part of it instead," declared the woman with the improvised toy drum.
"Till half the world knew all about it," agreed the strangler of bread.
"No wonder nobody round here can sell their houses," said their friend amid a further bout of clicking.
"Believe me," Heather took some pleasure in saying, "we wish you could."
At first Sylvia seemed willing to let that serve as her own riposte. She was on her way out of the shop when she remarked "Well, now we know what it feels like to be witches, Sam."
"I expect we'll see you soon, Joe," Heather said, and turned her back on the women to see Sam already limping homeward. Once she and Sylvia were out of earshot of the shop, Heather murmured "Did you need to bring up witches?"
"Seems like I must have since I did." Sylvia looked slyly amused by that or with anticipation. "I didn't tell you about the Goodmanswood witch yet, did I?" she said.
"No," said Heather, and even less enthusiastically "Get it over with."
"She lived in the cottage nearest to the woods. After Selcouth died she started spending most of her time in them until people saw her with, well, they said her familiar. Something like a child except it was too tall and thin and with hardly any face you'd want to call one. They got her arrested by the witch-finders, and she told them being in the woods had changed her. She'd grown another nipple—maybe that's where that idea originally came from. Only hers didn't stay in one place."
"Sounds as if a psychiatrist would have been in order."
"No, she showed them how it wandered all over her body. The story is she was glad they hanged her before she could change any further. They burned her cottage down and buried her at the crossroads in the High Street, but something's supposed to have dug her up and taken her back to the woods."
If all this came from the book Sam had bought his aunt for Christmas, Heather would have preferred him to have found Sylvia a different gift. He was opening their gate, having limped ahead as if to stay out of reach of the tale. Heather was about to follow him when she saw a youngish couple, presumably Rosemary's parents, hurrying along Jessica's front path. "I'll just see if Jessica wants a word," she said.
"Are you better off without me?"
"Never usually, but maybe till we find out. . ." When Sylvia tramped into their paved garden, Heather left her. "Jessica," she called.
Jessica was admitting the couple to her house. "Heather. I don't know if you ought -" She moved aside for the visitors and took a step onto her path. "She's in the front room," she told them. "I'll be there in a minute."
Heather didn't speak again until she was close enough to keep her voice low.
"What happened? Is it our fault somehow?"
"Have you all been out?" Jessica asked, peering along the street to Sylvia and Sam."
"We've been at mother's watching her, her latest experiment."
"What was that?" said Jessica, more sharply than Heather liked.
"More of the art she brings out of the woods."
"You might want to let her know people have been talking."
"They do, don't they? And they've said . . ."
"You've all been seen going in and out of there all the time. Everyone except you at least," Jessica said and cocked her head towards a burst of comforting murmurs in the front room. "I'm not saying it is, but that could be why Rosemary imagined whatever she did." .
"Is she getting over it?"
"She's stopped screaming. She started when we woke her. I know it's meant to be dangerous to."
The murmurs tailed off, and a small voice protested "I wasn't asleep."
"You must have been, Rosemary." Jessica gave Heather the s
ort of look adults shared about children as she confided "She said she was following somebody too tall for words."
"He was as tall as the sky," the little girl called past a renewed duet of murmuring, "but he kept being long instead like a shadow."
"If it was a shadow," Jessica said as if a problem had been solved, "it couldn't have had a face like you said."
"He did. It was like Mr. Price."
Jessica backed into her hall. "Shall we discuss it another time, Heather?"
Heather saw that Jessica didn't want Rosemary further disturbed, but she couldn't help feeling cast out. She was risking a smile as she turned away when the little girl said louder than her parents' murmurs "He had a face and he talked to me."
Heather faltered and failed to keep a question to herself. "What did he say?"
"I'll speak to you again soon, Heather," Jessica told her. It might've been intended as a warning; the expression she withdrew into the house was disapproving enough. The next moment the door was shut, just not soon enough to prevent Heather from hearing the little girl's words. They had to be her answer to the question Heather would have given a good deal not to have asked. "My child," Rosemary said.
29: A Reading from the Dark
Heather lurched awake convinced she'd done something wrong. When she blinked away some of the dark that was glued to her eyes she managed to distinguish that the luminous twigs of the bedside clock showed a number of minutes past three in the morning. She might have drawn reassurance from the familiar charcoal sketch of the outlines of her room if a smell of hoary paper hadn't insinuated itself into the dimness. Though her next breath was free of the odour, she fumbled the quilt up to cover most of her face. Now she was alone with her sluggishly restless thoughts—with the memory of wanting to take an act back. She wished she had kept Rosemary's answer to herself.
Perhaps it was a fragment of some fairy tale the little girl had heard or read.
Heather was perplexed only because it had disturbed both Sylvia and Sam. No doubt that was one more indication of the way his aunt's state was affecting him, and yet another development to be worried about, along with his apparent fear of leaving home that must betray how nervous he was of letting her or his father or himself down, and Margo's obsession with the woods that was becoming a little too reminiscent of Lennox's, and Sylvia's secret breakdown even if it had been treated, and her present condition, and the willingness of people Heather barely knew to blame her family for events they didn't even bother to define . . . Was there any aspect of her life she didn't need to fret about? Surely her work wouldn't turn on her, but as she let herself anticipate the day after tomorrow—texts to scan, muted queries from students, the masses of hushed books on the shelves, the sense of a past safely bound up for consultation—her job felt too much like a refuge, a denial of everything else in her life. Nevertheless allowing her mind to rest on it seemed to be her route back to sleep, and she was beginning to feel close to drowsing when she froze, as did her breath. There was a furtive sound in the house.
When she raised her head the night came to meet it. At first the only noise she could be sure of was the thumping of a heartbeat. Of course it was her own, though it sounded as if it belonged to the night. She eased herself upright against the pillow and held a long slow breath. In a moment she heard what had roused her. Sylvia was speaking in the next room.
She must be sharing confidences with Sam while she thought her sister was asleep. The notion almost sent Heather marching into Sylvia's room to demand what was so secret it had to wait for the dark. Instead she sneaked her legs out from beneath the quilt and took all the time stealth required. She didn't care how sly she felt—she wanted to hear.
She had just inched her door wide enough to let her out of the room when a muffled groan escaped Sam. What could Sylvia have said to distress him? His reaction hadn't prevented her from continuing to murmur as though she hadn't heard him. Anger at the insensitivity almost overcame Heather's resolve not to draw attention to herself, but she edged onto the landing without a sound. As she did so Sam groaned again, and she realised he was both in his own room and asleep.
Then whom was Sylvia addressing? For a panicky instant Heather was afraid to hear an answering voice, and then that Sylvia was talking to herself. Her speech hadn't quite the tone of a monologue, however; It was more—Heather tiptoed a pace towards her sister's room and knew what she was overhearing. Sylvia was reading aloud.
She must be practising for when her child was old enough to listen, Heather told herself. Tiptoeing across the carpet gave her time to wonder what Sylvia was reading from, especially since no light was visible under the door. She had to press her ear against one unnecessarily warm upper panel before she was able to make out a word. As she covered her mouth and nose with one hand to silence her breath she heard Sylvia say "All shall be contained within a single form and give it life."
She was reading to her unborn child from Selcouth's journal. That would have been disturbing enough by itself, but Heather especially disliked the tone of meaningful affection her sister's voice had acquired for the duration of the sentence. Her unease was such that for some moments she failed to grasp why
Sylvia had hushed. She must be aware that someone was outside the door.
Heather was reaching for the doorknob when the smell of ancient paper seeped out of the room. She didn't have to confront Sylvia now. For any number of reasons, some of which she preferred to leave undefined, it would be better to wait until daylight. She couldn't help it if her decision seemed like a retreat. She backed away as fast as stealth permitted and, having felt compelled to shut her door in fractions of an inch, sought refuge in her bed.
For altogether too long she was afraid of being followed into her room. What could Sylvia accuse her of? Trying to establish what was happening in the middle of the night in her own house? She was doing her best to prepare a response that wouldn't sound defensive when she heard Sylvia resume reading aloud. She strained her ears until they felt stuffed with her pulse, but could identify only one word. "Nathaniel," Sylvia murmured, and minutes later "Nathaniel."
The affection in her voice surely meant she was speaking to her child rather than reading the name from the book, but reassurance wasn't coming anywhere near
Heather. As she heard her sister's murmur underlying her own breaths she grew desperate enough to try to feel that
Sylvia was reading her to sleep. She had no idea how much time passed before unconsciousness took her, let alone before she was awakened by a presence in the room.
She felt as if she hadn't slept—as if she had been followed directly from
Sylvia's room—but when her eyes sprang open she saw daylight and Sam. He knotted the cord of his bathrobe tighter around himself while she blinked stickily at him. "Have I overslept?" she mumbled.
"It's Sunday."
"I won't be late for work, then. Do you need me for something? Does Sylvie?"
He'd been ready to answer the first question, but the second pressed his lips together. He seemed uncertain how or where to look as he muttered "She's gone."
"Sorry, gone where?"
"Couldn't say."
"What did she tell you?" Heather said impatiently.
"Nothing. I was asleep when she went."
"Then how do you know?"
"You can see what she left."
"I will."
She had scarcely taken hold of the edge of the quilt when Sam limped out of the room, leaving her to reflect how much warier he was of glimpsing her undressed since Sylvia had moved in. She retrieved her robe from the hook on the door and groped into the sleeves, and tied the cord around her waist as she padded onto the landing. While Sam loitered at the top of the stairs she pushed Sylvia's door open, then sucked in a dismayed breath that tasted bitterly of paper. Her sister's three suitcases had been nesting on top of the wardrobe, but there was no sign of them.
Advancing into the room didn't help. The cases weren't hiding on the far sid
e of the bed, and there was insufficient space beneath. If the room didn't feel wholly deserted, that was no comfort: the occupant was Selcouth's journal on the desk. She was overwhelmed by dislike of the secrecy of its contents, its binding as black as the carapace of a beetle, its indefinably rotten smell. She turned her back on it to find Sam watching her.
Without giving her time to interpret his expression, he pointed down the stairs.
"She left a note."
"Couldn't you have brought it up?" Heather protested, and would have steered him none too gently out of her way if he hadn't limped aside. A small square of paper so thoroughly inscribed that from the top of the stairs it looked almost as black as Selcouth's journal was drooping against the phone. The couple of seconds involved in running downstairs gave her too much of a chance to imagine
Sylvia's message before it was in her hand. Thanks for putting up with me and looking after me Please don't think I'm being ungrateful or impulsive, but the book's taken me away again. No need to worry about Natty or me. You'll be seeing us soon. Wish I could have helped more. S XXX. The handwriting of the last two sentences was so microscopic Heather might have concluded they were designed not to be read. Even so, they had left so little space for Sylvia's initial that the kisses had to compose themselves from the extended lower curve of the letter, as if they were pinning her symbol down or consuming it or both. Heather's thoughts snagged on the idea. Any moment she would have to consider the implications of the note, and she knew she would like them less and less. Her mind hadn't freed itself when the phone rang.
She snatched up the receiver, hoping it would have Sylvia's voice. "Hello?"
"Mrs. Harvey? That's to say, Ms Price?"
"Either," she said, anxious to know why the man sounded familiar.
"It's Francis Lowe at the Arbour."
"Dr Lowe." She both wanted and was afraid to learn "Is my sister there?"
"Your sister. No, Mrs. Price."
"You don't need to keep playing with my name. Why are you calling?" she said, experiencing dismay that came close to rendering him irrelevant as she reread Sylvia's note.
The Darkest Part Of The Woods Page 26
